“We found the remains of my shirt at the scene along with the tape measure I lost that day. We placed the articles in plastic bags, gathered some samples of rock and earth from the area, and took some pictures of the spot. We also discovered that branches of trees in the area where the craft came down had withered away and died, while all around the trees were flourishing normally.”
It is said that the soil samples collected were tested by various authorities, but again, as is usual in UFO matters, nothing was ever proven.
Mr. Michalak died, at the age of 83, in October of 1999. And his encounter has remained one of the most puzzling UFO cases on record.
—RONALD D. STORY
mind control by aliens The idea that the mind can be controlled or influenced by some form of advanced technology wielded by aliens or secretive people in possession of special knowledge is more pervasive than most people realize. The thought that free will can be subverted and man is a mere puppet to higher powers in the universe has fascinated thinkers throughout history. Supernatural beliefs, most notably demonic possession and the casting of spells, often invoke the premise that the mind may be powerless against control by forces external to the human soul.
Arthur Koestler affirms that the dramatic motif of volition against fate is one of the most powerful archetypes in literature and has appeared in countless forms. Threats to individual or collective freedom arouses very primal human fears and can yield a drama of intense emotions when free will is affirmed. Conversely, when free will is denied, the effect is coldly distancing and allows contemplation of humans as blameless innocents caught in a web of impersonal forces. Because you cannot have heroes without a powerful adversary, paranoia is virtually de rigueur in great literature. (Thorpe, 1980) Extraterrestrials are one of the more recent additions to the pantheon of gods, demons, superior races, secret societies, and power elites that have been pulling the strings for ages.
EARLY HISTORY
Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Horla” (1885) may be the first work of fiction to incorporate the general notion. A gentleman tormented by fears and possible hallucinations speculates that thinkers from a distant world may traverse space to conquer as the Norsemen crossed seas to subjugate feebler nations. “We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small—we who live on this particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.” He realizes that Mesmer’s experiments in suggestion, ten years earlier, were the first look at a new weapon of this new Lord, the Horla. Enslaving the human soul, he would make of humanity what we made of horses and oxen. “His slave and His food, by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!” As the story proceeds, the realization strengthens that the Horla has taken hold of the gentleman. “It is He, the Horla who haunts me, and who makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, He is becoming my soul.” He tries to combat it, and in horror realizes there is only one escape.
The story, tragically, reflects a worsening mental state of the author. Maupassant’s body was failing and he took drugs. He started to have hallucinations, then delusions of persecution, and eventually made attempts at suicide. He was committed to an asylum where he died in 1893. (Commin, n.d.)
H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928) speaks of a race called the Great Old Ones which came from the stars and spoke to men by “molding their dreams.” The emergence of Cthulhu from beneath the seas is accompanied by sensitive individuals going mad. The cult that sought to liberate him warned he would bring Earth beneath his sway. (Lovecraft, 1978)
Lovecraft’s use of the motif is more philosophical and consciously guided by a mechanistic supernatural vision of the cosmos as totally indifferent to the wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, pterodactyls, fungi, men, trees, or other forms of biological energy. As he wrote in a letter a year before this story: “To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.” It has been said that Lovecraft was the first sciencefiction writer to cultivate this stark aesthetic in the service of horror. (Joshi, 1980) The idea has obvious roots in the metaphor of deep time advanced by Charles Lyell and other geologists in the prior century. (Gould, 1987) Lovecraft’s aesthetic led to a proliferation of amoral aliens in subsequent decades.
THE SF CONNECTION
C.L. Moore’s “Shambleau” (1933) reinvents the Medusa as a feline alien with terribly hypnotic eyes able to control the mind and soul as it drains the life force of its victim. The victim enjoys both horror and pleasure as he knows horrible wild things and visits unbelievable places while entwined in her ropy embrace. “Black Thirst” (1934) revisits the idea with an alien able to steal a soul through the eyes and sink the victim into a waking nightmare. (Del Rey, 1975) Stanley Weinbaum’s “A Valley of Dreams” (1934) has Tweel, an ostrich-like Martian, try to prevent Earthmen from entering a valley that looks like paradise. It soon transpires it is a telepathic illusion generated by dream-beasts, blobby plants with writhing rope tentacles to lure animals in to feed on them. (Weinbaum, 1974)
H.G. Wells wrote a couple of works involving the idea of extraterrestrial influences in 1937. The Camford Visitation has a vicar use a case of a person troubled by a disembodied voice in a book he is writing called ExtraTerrestrial Disturbances of Human Mentality. The case is said to demonstrate an “upthrust of the subconscious through some sort of spacetime dislocation.” (Slusser and Rabkin, 1987) Better known is Star-Begotten: A Biological Fantasia. It tells the tale of a man discovering a generation of humans who are more elevated than prior generations. They possess unaccountable intuitions, mathematical gifts, strange memories and exceptional abilities. He becomes enamored with the idea that aliens of higher development are manipulating cosmic energies and firing away at human chromosomes with increasing accuracy and effectiveness through the ages. The Martians were acting as a sort of interplanetary tutor unlike the invaders of War of the Worlds. The book affects an ambiguity over whether the narrator was deluding himself with pseudoscientific nonsense or making an actual discovery. At the conclusion, the narrator realizes with a start that he himself was one of the “strangers and innovators to our fantastic planet who were crowding into life and making it over anew.” (Wells, 1970)
The pulp writer Raymond Z. Gallun utilized the extraterrestrial influence motif in several stories. “The Magician of Dream Valley” (1938) and “The Lotus-Engine” (1940) develop the idea of aliens able to generate radiations that totally envelop humans in a hallucinatory reality. In “Godson of Almarlu” (1936) a machine was devised that was said to now and again influence terrestrial life. “Hotel Cosmos” (1938) revolves around a globe that sends out invisible radiations of madness that affects the nervous tissue and is used to sabotage a Galactic Conference.
Arthur C. Clarke used the motif in two widely acclaimed works. In Childhood’s End (1953) an Overmind “attempted to act directly upon the minds of races and to influence their development.” It failed with prior worlds, but Earth’s youths are successfully adapted to alien consciousness and the reader experiences them leaving the cradle of the Earth as they evolve towards the Overmind.
Even better known, if less understood, is the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The monolith of an alien culture appears before a tribe of apes and invests a new awareness within them that sets human evolution on the course of cosmic ambitions. As originally conceived, the alien artifact was to create an hypnotic teaching effect. In the film it is wisely rendered as a mystical moment of McLuhanesque enlightenment as the ape that touched the monolith realized the extension of power capable with a tool. A bone becomes a weapon for hunting and murder and this leads inexorably towards atom bombs and space travel. (Agel, 1970)
Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan (1959) is another acclaimed work that uses the device for particularly enjoyable distancing purposes. Humankind was caused to evolve solel
y to create and transport a tiny repair part for an alien vessel stranded on the Saturnian moon of Titan. The aliens, called Tralfamadorians, sent messages to the stranded aliens by having humans unconsciously form them. Here is how the process is explained: “Tralfamadorians were able to make certain impulses from the Universal Will to Become echo through the vaulted architecture of the universe with about three times the speed of light. And able to focus and modulate these impulses so as to influence creatures far, far away and inspire them to serve Tralfamodorian ends.” Civilizations bloomed and crumbled as humans built tremendous structures to relay messages to Titan. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: “Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed.” (Vonnegut, 1959)
Also notable, particularly in the light of interviews where the author claims the book is based in part on his real-life mystical experiences, is Philip K. Dick’s Valis (1983). (Platt, 1980) The title refers to an influencing machine from the star system of Sirius. The protagonist explains its operation by saying, “Sites of his brain were being selectively stimulated by tight energy beams from far off, perhaps millions of miles away.” The narrator is convinced of the insanity of the idea of Valis and is struck by the oddity of “a lunatic discounting his hallucinations in this sophisticated manner; [the protagonist] had intellectually dealt himself out of the game of madness while still enjoying its sights and sounds.” The belief that information-rich beams of energy focused on his head allowed him to recognize his hallucinations as hallucinations. “But…he now had a ‘they’.” Not much of an improvement, in the opinion of the narrator. (Dick, 1981)
Movies involving the motif of alien influence are common. Dramatically, the best was probably Five Million Miles to Earth of the Quatermass series. It is discovered that insectoid Martians once psychically enslaved humanity at the dawn of history. A buried spaceship with dead Martians is dug up, but the spaceship comes alive and starts to take control of humanity once more.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955) is also revered by critics for its rich metaphor of the pod people. Technically, this is better as an example of the Capgras syndrome form of paranoia, but it is understandably lumped in with the pandemic of alien possession in fifties cinema: Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer space, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Kronos, Beast With a Million Eyes, Enemy from Space, and so on.
Control by implant is found in Invaders from Mars, where the operation to insert it is utilized as a dramatic peril. It recurs in Battle in Outer Space, but here a strobing beam of light does the operation as the victim drives a car. After the radio control apparatus makes him a slave to the glorious planet Nehtal, he experiences a time loss and discovers a trickle of blood on his forehead. In Catwomen of the Moon a beam of light is alone the force of influence. In Earth vs. the Flying Saucers another beam of light makes the skull of a victim transparent while knowledge is sucked out. A cruder form of mindscan involving a TV monitor can be found in Invasion of the Star Creatures, a lame comedy. Zontar—The Thing from Venus offers an amusing variant by some very unconvincing ‘injecto-pods,’ vampire-bats with lobster tails that gain control when they bite you in the neck.
TV MIND CONTROL
Television probably regards alien influence as a staple item. Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Invaders, The Outer Limits, Space 1999, Dr. Who all immediately spring to mind with episodes. It has prompted caricature such as a Dick van Dyke show in which Zombies from Twylo import walnuts that Rob feels is stealing his imagination. The final episode of The Monkees titled “Mijacageo” masterfully invokes the motif for satirical purposes. Humanity becomes controlled through the agency of television sets broadcasting frodis energy directed by a mad scientist (Rip Taylor at his best), and originating in an extraterrestrial bush whose spacecraft crashed on Earth. By any measure, the idea that aliens influence or control man has shown itself to be a durable and seductive feature of our image of higher powers in the universe. Their intimate concern with the mental life of humans is an unconscious given.
As a dramatic device, the mind-bending alien cannot be faulted. Fiction is always granted license in the matter of gimmicks helpful in generating conflict and disparities of power or in generating philosophical moods and ambiances. Questions of plausibility would be invalid in such contexts. Yet, it is a question worth asking when the context becomes nonfictional as happens in UFOlogy. Are such things possible?
The answer is probably not. Direct material control of the mind by external forces can be placed near the bottom of any list of sciencefiction (SF) notions likely to become reality. It may be more probable than invisibility and teleportation, but time travel, warp drives, and utopia probably have better odds and they seem overly paradoxical to lend them much credence. Many factors contribute to such an assessment.
BRAIN RESEARCH
How does one generate minute but precise potentials of energy across microscopic distances at specific points within a mass of biological tissues possessing electrical potentials in overlying areas? To do this without electrodes to insulate and guide the energy would require fabulous finesse. Varying tissue densities would defocus particle streams. What prevents interactive effects in the tissue above the sites of manipulation? Worse, brains do not map precisely one to another. Knowing how to control one mind does not immediately gain you the ability to control another one. (Valenstein, 1975)
Another problem underlying external modes of influence is that the brain, contrary to popular metaphors, is not like a computer with switches that can be flipped or wires that can be inductively given an electrical charge. Electricity is probably only a superficial feature of brain activity overlying systems of molecular interactions that are the primary modifiers of consciousness. There are hundreds of hormones, maybe even thousands (their science is embryonic at present) involved in brain function; and there must a careful orchestration of these chemical reactions for the brain to do its work. Once comprehended one can easily realize why efforts to use electricity to control the mind are about as effective as hitting a person over the head with a hammer. Our hypothetical mind ray would practically have to change water into wine from a distance, indeed into a stable of far more complex molecules. It is literally asking for miracles. (Bergland, 1985)
Electrodes implanted in the brain remove some of the problems inherent in the ray, but not the fundamental one that the brain is more gland than computer. Wilder Penfield’s work with electrodes that yielded some reactions is sometimes cited by mind controller wannabes as evidence that there is a future in brain stimulation. Penfield himself, however, regarded his work as eliminating the possibility of mind control. Pleasant sensations and some modifications of emotional states were elicited in a few instances. Compelled behavior, however, was totally absent. The brain proved to be a remarkably plastic biological entity with behaviors regulated through many sites. For all practical purposes, the human will remains autonomous. (Lewis, 1981)
The dream of controlling human thought and action with less fabulous technology has been a notoriously hit and miss occupation. Threats and torture, crude as they are, worked well enough for most social engineers in the past, though the downside risks of revenge, intransigence, and low productivity must be factored in. Social persuasion techniques like advertising do not compel buying behavior, but rather try to draw attention to product existence followed by the evocation of pleasurable mental associations to make purchase of the product a rewarding experience. Drugs can alter the general state of mind and elicit rewarding sensations of power, ecstasy, excitement, and tranquility which seemingly provoke compulsive behavior in the form of more drug-taking, but do not force one to do the will of others in an absolute sense. You can find other drug sources and the option of quitting is usually chosen at some point. Hypnosis, as the alternate term indicates, is more a case of suggestion than a bending of will. Even the bugaboo of brainwashing has on critical analysis showed itself to be less imposing than myth warns. Humans do pretty much as they d
arn well please. (Bromley and Shupe, 1981)
These considerations force a high measure of skepticism towards all claims that mind rays from any source are manipulating humans. The alternative that humans can convince themselves such things are real when in fact they are fantasy has to be accorded a higher order of probability. Such claims do appear in UFO culture repeatedly.
THE AGE OF FLYING SAUCERS
In May 1945, Ray Palmer’s magazine Amazing Stories published a story “I Remember Lemuria” by Richard Shaver. Though appearing in a SF magazine, Shaver and Palmer professed that it recounted true occurrences. That story and others serialized from it started a controversy known as the Shaver Mystery. The tales built up a cosmology steeped in cult conspiracy notions, hearkening back to ancient wisdom and lost continents. Among the elements of the cosmology was something called the “dero.” In Shaver’s words, the dero referred to a concept of “electronic surveillance, through mind-contacting and mind-influencing machinery.” He believed the mind was capable of inducting influences “magnetically from the destructive forces of nature” and that opened up the possibility of a worldwide “telemach” that would be like a radiotelephone into the mind.
With this device, degenerate beings infiltrating old service chambers of a previous civilization were trying to rule men’s minds. Among the signs demonstrating someone was being affected by the dero was a person’s tendency to talk contradictions and clichés. The dero speed up the thoughts of emperors and czars to impel the world towards destruction. Shaver’s views struck a chord with many readers, but hardcore SF fans reacted with disdain. (Keel, 1983)
SOUL SNATCHERS
The early contactees utilize mind control notions sporadically. Howard Menger was probably the most prominent one with his aliens claiming to distribute devices over the landscape designed to open minds up to the possibility of space travel. A rival group of darker intent called The Conspiracy possessed the capability of advanced brain therapy. The two sides were locked in a ceaseless battle for men’s souls. (Menger, 1959; 1967)
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 65
